Last Day of Oh Wow!'s

For 40+ years I have been reading magazine articles and watching TV shows that reference the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. When it was pouring rain on our way into London this morning, I had a fleeting thought that maybe we should not go there as planned because it was going to rain all day. We all agreed that even if it rained, we would still find it beautiful and we would regret it if we did not go,

If I had to sum up the last fourteen days in two words, it would be, "Oh, wow!" Countless times we would walk around a corner and everyone would say, "Oh, wow!"

Thankfully, Kew has quite a few glass houses, as the British call them. We managed to miss a lot of the rain by spending time exploring them. Like this one with its winding staircase which leads to an upper walkway around the entire greenhouse.

I'll make this post easy for me by doing this:

Oh wow!

Oh wow!

Oh wow!

There's Lindsey going up the stairs.....

.... and this is the view from the top.

Kew is HUGE! 300 acres! There were many large gardens between the greenhouses. I love the meadowy look that you get when you plant random tulips in a lawn and don't cut the grass.

Walking between areas of interest was sometimes a wet experience. The picture above was taken under Yim's umbrella.

I just had to put this bench in for my bench-making husband. Someone was having a lot of fun when they invented this one.

For the next four months there will be an art installation by Marc Quinn throughout the gardens.

The glass houses are beautiful.

Inside some of them the atmosphere was pretty humid.

Outside, men were battling with snakes.

And another "Oh wow!"

I want to try this with my dogwood cuttings.

I guess there is no excuse for getting the wrong bed when a gardener is sent to deadhead or weed or dig.

"Oh wow!"

"Oh wow!"

"Oh wow!"

Don't you love those lily pads?

"Oh wow!"

By the end of the day, we were feeling a little like these tulips.

We made our way back to the car down this long border. It was still pretty gloomy out.

As we were leaving it seemed that the art was singing us a goodbye song. The wind blows through these pipes making random music. Another one of Marc Quinn's installations.

And, to complete the circle of this vacation, we ended it with a walk along a tow path on the Thames, just like we did on the first day in Oxford.

This vacation's sponsor? Mud.

Yim's steps for the trip?

Total 234,917. Average 16,780/day

I hope you enjoyed the trip as much as we did.